Whole Foods partners with Boomtown on technology and snacks

Whole Foods Market has partnered with Boulder’s BoomTown Accelerator to feed tech professionals healthy food and help the grocer improve its own technology.

The partnership appears to be the first of its kind for the organic grocery chain based in Texas. Whole Foods will stock BoomTown’s kitchen with healthy food and provide grocery delivery from Whole Foods via Instacart.

BoomTown will help the grocer’s regional operation with its technology. That could include building apps to help the grocer’s internal operations to donation campaigns in conjunction with third-party nonprofits.

But other than partnering with a technology accelerator, such local matchups aren’t too out of the ordinary for the grocer. Whole Foods often supports local communities by testing out food products grown or made by local farmers and providers. (Here’s a list of local foods the store carries.)

“This is the first time we have entered a partnership with a tech accelerator,” said Adam Ornelas, who does regional marketing & community relations for Colorado with Whole Foods Market. “We’re looking to pursue partnerships with organizations and companies that are committed to making positive impacts in the community. Those entities can range from food-related – to non-food-related. It’s all about what we can learn from one another and what we can do together.”

From Whole Foods to BoomTown (image courtesy of BoomTown)

BoomTown began as a technology accelerator in 2014 and has since helped at least 33 startups get to the next level of attention, funding and market share. Graduates include Bitsbox, Kickfurther and ParkiFi.

The company has expanded its expertise by building an Internet of Things lab and adding a digital health care accelerator. The partnership with Whole Foods appears to be more about health than developing food products.

“There is a pervasive fallacy in startup culture that drinking Red Bull, staying up all night and forgoing exercise creates a competitive advantage for the startup. This is a myth. And, this kind of thinking causes big problems for entrepreneurs. It’s unsustainable, and it’s unhealthy,” said Toby Krout, BoomTown’s co-director.

“At Boomtown, we orbit around entrepreneurs. Everything that we do is to serve them,” he added. “So, it’s a no-brainer for us to try to eliminate this thinking. While it’s true that launching and running startups requires occasional sprints, the reality is that balanced teams are more productive. By engaging in partnerships like this, we get to provide a healthier environment for our startups and by doing so we create a competitive advantage for them.”

Whole Foods approached BoomTown just as the accelerator was searching for ways to bring balance “inside our doors,” said Krout, adding there is an undisclosed monetary exchange.

Added Ornelas, with Whole Foods, “We hope to tap into that creative and innovative spirit that is at the core of Boulder and embodied by the entrepreneurs at BoomTown. We want to learn how to further implement that spirit into our everyday routines locally and regionally.”

[…] Whole Foods partners with Boomtown on technology and snacks Whole Foods Market has partnered with Boulder's BoomTown Accelerator to feed tech professionals healthy food and help the grocer improve its own technology. The partnership appears to be the first of its kind for the organic grocery chain based in Texas.Read more on The Denver Post (blog) […]

Tamara Chuang covers personal technology and local tech news for The Denver Post. She previously spent 10 years doing the same thing for The Orange County Register before taking a hiatus to move here and become a SAHM to a precocious toddler.